What Happened To The Cycloramic App From Shark Tank Season 5?

With more than 15 seasons of business-minded shenanigans in its wake, ABC's hit reality series "Shark Tank" has featured a seemingly endless stream of entrepreneurs eager to convince the series' panel of billionaire investors that their product is primed to be the next big thing. Of course, if you've been watching the show since the early days, you know deals brokered between sharks and entrepreneurs tend to be few and far between. You might also know that even when a deal is struck on the show, there's still no guarantee it will officially close once the cameras stop rolling.

That being the case, viewers would generally be correct in assuming that the list of major success stories spawned from deals made on the "Shark Tank" set is slim, with even some seemingly sure-fire hits like Season 5's Breathometer struggling mightily after their prime-time appearance. Certain other products like The Brake Free Helmet Light from Season 12 have, however, proven to be quite popular with consumers.  

To date, only one "Shark Tank" alum has been called the series' biggest success story by soon to be ex-Shark Mark Cuban. That product is the Cycloramic panoramic photography app, which appeared in a season 5 episode. Even as creator Bruno Francois' pitch may have lacked a certain "Shark Tank-y" pizzazz, it still proved quite compelling to the series' panel of would-be investors. Here's what became of the Cycloramic app after its "Shark Tank" debut.

Longtime "Shark Tank" viewers no doubt recall Bruno Francois' Season 5 appearance vividly, if only because his product inspired a full-blown feeding frenzy among the panelists, which featured series regulars Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Kevin O'Leary, and Daymond John, as well as a guest Shark in film producer and co-owner of the New York Giants football team, Steve Tisch. Francois begins his pitch for the Cycloramic app with his ask, offering 5% of his company to any shark willing to invest $90,000 in the venture.

As for the ask, Francois notes the $1.8 million valuation is, perhaps, a little on the conservative side, in part because Cycloramic was then relatively new and unproven on the market. Francois showed how Cycloramic cleverly utilizes a cell phone's built-in vibration function to spin the device in a circle, thus allowing it to take a hands-free 360 degree panoramic photograph. After confirming he held the patent on the innovative tech, Francois confirmed he had been selling the app for $0.99 on iTunes and already cleared approximately $660,000.

Intrigued by what they saw, a bidding war quickly took shape, with the Sharks offering multiple lucrative deals and even cutting several side deals with fellow panelists in their pursuit of Cycloramic. While John, O'Leary, and Tisch all made solid offers in terms of dollar amount and percentage points, Francois eventually brokered a deal with Cuban and Greiner, who teamed up to front Cycloramic half-a-million bucks in exchange for 15% of the company.

Bruno Francois' path to that "Shark Tank" deal was hardly a fluke, with the would-be tech-giant reportedly leaving a cushy job with his family business in 2011 to put his mechanical engineering and computer science background to work in service of developing a viral app. It was a calculated risk to take, but it was one that seemed likely to pay off once Francois hit on the idea of using iPhone's built-in vibration features in a 360-degree panoramic photography application — one that bested even the capabilities of Apple's own panoramic features, which then topped out at 240-degrees.

A week after the app launched, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak helped put Cycloramic on the map, posting a 360-degree shot on his own Facebook page. That endorsement was enough to push Cycloramic to No. 1 in The App Store, and may have helped pave the way to Francois' "Shark Tank" appearance. 

That 2014 prime-time exposure reportedly led to another significant boost in Cycloramic downloads. The app would eventually see more than 20 million downloads, though by the end of 2014, fewer iPhone users were seeking it out in The App Store. Complicating matters more was Apple's ensuing iPhone re-design, which featured more rounded edges that made it all-but impossible for the device to stand and spin on its end, severely limiting Cycloramic's functionality.

Francois solved that balance issue by encouraging users to utilize the iPhone's charging plug as a base. Quick fix aside, when coupled with the decline in downloads, the Cycloramic founder believed the app's days were already numbered, and thus sought to pivot. 

Said pivot involved Bruno Francois sinking a substantial amount of his company's finances into the development of a new idea — one which was not merely an app, but a business-to-business product that borrowed from existing Cycloramic tech and looked beyond just a one-time download fee as a revenue base. After spotting an opportunity in the online auto sales arena, Car360 was born, with Francois offering the product as a potentially game-changing way for sellers to shoot and scan-in 360-degree images of the cars they were selling.

Interest in Car360 was as immediate as it was substantial, with Francois developing the tech with no shortage of financial backing, including another cash infusion from Mark Cuban, who has continued to sing the Cycloramic creator's praises long after his initial "Shark Tank" investment. 

Cuban's Car360 investment likely proved the more lucrative of the two, as a 2017 demonstration of Francois' tech earned the interest of Carvana CEO Ernest Garcia, who didn't just want to utilize it on his site, but sought to take ownership of Francois' company altogether, ponying up a reported $22 million to do so in 2018.

While that may not be the biggest acquisition in the history of "Shark Tank" investments, Cuban proudly touts Francois' success because he was so clever in reinventing the company after his initial Cycloramic success faded. As for Francois, the Car360 creator actually joined the Carvana team himself at the time of the acquisition, and since 2018 has been listed as the company's director of Research & Development. That is quite the success story indeed.